president obama is a lawyer and a student of constitutional law. the repayments of debts clause in the 14th amendment as generalized to u.s. debts in general does not give the president authority to prevent congress from defaulting on national debt. you could make a constitutional argument possibly that the debt ceiling as a statute impinges on the constitutional authority of the congress, but it's very difficult to infer a power of the executive branch to do this. the constitution does not prevent the government from doing stupid things. >> james, did you want to follow? >> richard, i like your point. one thing about lincoln that we can distinguish him from the president today is lincoln believed above all in mental clarity, verbal clarity, speaking exactly what he meant. today our leaders write almost none of them. the fundamental link between mind, hand, and deed has been broken forever. it's been corrupted. what's the core of this? lincoln believed in simplicity. this special interest of slavery was the core cause of the war. lincoln might say